The Kmart building along South Broadway is expected to be scrapped this year to make way for 340 to 350 new apartments, the property manager said Monday.
Price Development Group is proposing that a seven-story apartment building take over about a third of the acreage previously leased by Kmart, said Dan Cohen, development manager with D4 Urban LLC. The development company with offices in California, Missouri and Texas couldn't be immediately reached Monday afternoon.
D4 Urban LLC manages the 60-acre property that includes Ace Hardware, Sam's Club, Safeway and the former Kmart. Kmart closed and left the shopping center in April after poor financial performance by its parent company, Sears Holdings Corp.
"Obviously, we have existing retailers that we have long-standing relationships with," Cohen said. "We’re not looking to change that, but in circumstances like this where they want to change their store or they're going out of business, there’s an opportunity for redevelopment."
In 2009, D4 worked with the city to approve a redevelopment plan at the site that includes gradually increasing the density and making the so-called Denver Design District "a model for sustainable, mixed use, urban development in Denver and the USA."
In 2015, the group added 275 residential units with the two, five-story Denizen apartment buildings built on the western part of the site near the Alameda light rail station.
The pace of redevelopment is "wholly dependent on market conditions and existing leases," Cohen said. He estimated that construction would start on the new apartment building later this year with the project to be completed in 2019.
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